Trump Wins the Hearts and Minds of the Unions

Donald Trump became incredibly popular today with labor union leaders after he told them during a meeting that he will renegotiate NAFTA at the appropriate time. That happened in the aftermath of President Trump signing an executive order which formally withdraws the United States from the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Free Trade deal).

After making good on one of his essential campaign promises on Monday morning, and I am talking about the repeal of the TPP trade deal, Donald Trump had a meeting at the White House with the leaders of carpenters, constructions, sheet metal and plumbers unions.

During the talks, Trump pledged to terminate or renegotiate all trade deals that disadvantaged American workers. One of these is the infamous NAFTA, which caused over one million US jobs to be off-shored to Mexico and various other countries.

The union meeting at the White House included big names like Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan, North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey, United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Doug McCarron, SMART sheet metal workers’ union President Joseph Sellers and the president of the United Association Mark McManus, who represents pipe-fitters, plumbers, welders and various other trades.

Also present at the White House “party” were local union officials and today’s meeting really won the hearts and minds of labor union bosses.

Donald Trump met earlier today with twelve chief-execs of big companies with whom he discussed strategies for revitalizing the United States’s manufacturing economy.

Referring to union leaders, President Trump said:

“This is a group that I know well and we’re going to put a lot of people back to work and stop the ridiculous trade deals.”

Union bosses were absolutely thrilled by the meeting with President Trump:

After announcing the termination of the TPP deal, Donald Trump was cheered by the labor chiefs and this time we can safely presume the cheers were genuine, i.e. they weren’t coming from paid members in the audience. Later on, union bosses described their first contact with Donald Trump as incredible.

As a quick reminder, virtually all major US labor unions endorsed Hillary Clinton during the election campaign, yet today we witnessed a dramatic pivot from what was historically a Democrat stronghold.